Building relevant traffic for our blog is often the biggest challenge we face. One great way to generate links and traffic is to register your blog with popular blog directories.

WebsiteMagazine.com recently published a list of 30 popular blog directories. I’ve taken this list and turned it into a blog submission tracking spreadsheet that you can download and use to track your efforts in submitting your blog to the relevant blog directories on the list.

30 Popular Blog Directories

Use this list to generate additional traffic for your blog by

• Visiting each of these directories and
• Registering and claiming your blog.

Then use this document to track your efforts and any login information and other notes related to your submission. Keep in mind that not all directories are appropriate for all blogs. Some serve special niches which may not be appropriate for the focus of your blog. Also, check within your own industry to see if there are industry specific directories where you’ll want to pursue a listing for your blog.  

Many blog platforms provide the capability to “ping” or notify popular blog catalogues when you create new posts but a more hands-on effort on your part will ensure that you create a more targeted, focused listing that will pay off in more targeted, focused traffic to your blog.

You’re invited to attend Social Media Essentials for Business - a free teleseminar on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. 

Executive Coach and best selling author, Marsha Egan, will interview me on why, as a business owner or manager, it’s essential that you add social media to your marketing mix. We’ll discuss the major social media platforms and give examples of how you can use these to build your brand, establish your authority, create relationships and turn those relationships into partnerships, prospects, customers and profits.

View the following video for a message from me as to what you’ll learn when you tune in on May 20th! (By the way, even if you can’t attend, go ahead and register for Social Media Essentials for Business and you’ll receive the free MP3 recording of the session to listen to at your convenience…

Micah, who I had the pleasure to meet at Wordcamp Denver recently tweeted, “If you do SEO for a living, you will be out of business or irrelevant in 3 years.”

Naturally this got a lot of response.

To clarify and expand on his tweet he posted an article titled, “SEO is Dead” on his Learn to Duck blog where he contends that not only is SEO dead but that all of the SEO’ers have reinvented themselves as social media marketers and are now ruining social media. Micah, as you can tell, doesn’t have a problem being a lightening rod.

What he contends is that all we need is killer content and a WordPress blog. 

And, you know what, in general I agree. But why then, you ask, do you title your post, “SEO is NOT Dead” instead of, “I agree with Micah, SEO is Dead and I, for one am Happy!”

Because I also disagree with Micah. The point is that SEO, done correctly, will continue to be relevant for a long time because, to expand on his premise…

The need for killer content is a given but there’s an art to writing content that tells it’s story using the phrases and terms that resonate with your customers. Micah referenced writing for search engines when what good SEO is really all about is discovering the language of your audience and using their language, not yours, to convey your message.

WordPress as your site’s platform makes sense too, but why? Because WordPress has been developed to stay out of the way of your content. In other words it doesn’t obscure your content from the spidering eyes of search engines but reveals and spotlights instead, particularly with the assistance of plug-ins like the All in One SEO Pack.

But what if your site doesn’t easily lend itself to a WordPress overhaul. What if you don’t know the right way to populate the description fields of All In One SEO or how to select the right keywords or know how to emphasize them in your content. 

Micah’s a very smart guy and knows this stuff cold but what about the guy who knows how to make a great cup of coffee, customize a motorcycle, prepare taxes like nobody’s business? They do those things really well, why do they need to be SEO experts? Just because TurboTax is available should I abandon my CPA or H&R Block and spend the next 6 weeks digging through boxes of receipts?

I agree, SEO has been presented as some sort of magical, mystical dragon that can only be slain by SEO Knights, LLC. And, I’ve been one of those who’ve been abused by overcharging, underperforming BigSEO Incorporated. So yeah, I’m going to agree that a lot of SEO experts deserve all the anger they seem to be garnering these days but, in my view, the solution to SEO abuse is not to kill the industry but educate the consumer as to what good search engine optimization is really all about so they can make informed, intelligent decisions when selecting a specialist to assist them in gaining visibility and rankings in the major search engines.

I confess, when I see someone’s tweet (twitter post) and I believe it’s worth Retweeting (passing it on to my network of Twitter followers by adding a RT or Retweet to the beginning of the message) I’ll often swap out any short url links they’ve embedded in their tweet for one of my own?

Why this potentially nefarious breach of Twitter protocol (by the way, I don’t know if this is or not so chime in with your comment if you have an opinion)?

Simple. I want to know if what I’m tweeting is of value to those who follow me and by using a short URL with analytics service like http://cli.gs I can do this.

The following illustrate my point:

1.) The original tweet…

This post interested me because I was considering using the Auto DM feature of SocialToo myself.

2.) My Retweet

Using cut and paste - or Twitter platforms like TweetDeck to this automatically - I created a Retweet of the @SocialToo post but with my own short URL created via http://cli.gs

3.) Are my Twitter followers interested?

A short URL service like Cli.gs allows me to easily track what interests my followers the most. This feedback allows me to focus on adding more value by knowing what resonates.

What do You Recommend?

If you have your own Twitter analytics tools or comments of any sort related to this post, please let me know. Oh, and be sure and follow me on Twitter.

They sucked me right in on this one, didn’t they?